In the World of the High Tech Redneck, the Graybeard is the old guy who earned his gray by making all the mistakes, and tries to keep the young 'uns from repeating them. Silicon Graybeard is my term for an old hardware engineer; a circuit designer. The focus of this blog is on doing things, from radio to home machine shops and making all kinds of things, along with comments from a retired radio engineer running from tech or science news to economics; from firearms to the world at large.

Friday, March 10, 2017

Florida's RINO Infestation

My out-of-state friends have probably not heard that a great package of gun bills is apparently being scuttled in the Florida Senate, again - just like last year, by an influential Republican, again - just like last year, a Republican who made public commitments to being a supporter of the 2nd amendment, again - just like last year.

The RINO this year is the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, Anitere Flores of Miami. Miguel at Gun Free Zone has been doing the yeoman's work of reporting on this with important pieces starting yesterday, March 9th, when the story broke. Miquel's first report summarizes as follows:

Flores, a key vote on the Judiciary Committee, vowed she wouldn’t
support Steube’s 10 other bills, which means they would have virtually
no chance of making it onto the Senate floor.

Flores is one of five Republicans and four Democrats on the
committee, so if she votes against bills and all Democrats vote in
lockstep, Steube’s gun bills would be sent to their graves early.

Senator Greg Steube, who is referred to here, is a genuine advocate for Florida's law-abiding gun owners, and had originally (January) proposed a single large bill that embodied campus carry, open carry, carry in the "non-sterile" parts of airports (such as where the Ft. Lauderdale airport attack took place), courthouse accommodations, and more. He broke it into 10 smaller bills after concerns that one portion might block all the others.

"I cannot tell you why Sen. Flores suddenly turned on law-abiding gun
owners because I do not know. (Until yesterday she had a 100% rating
with NRA and USF)

I cannot tell you if Sen. Flores was acting
on her own behalf or on behalf of the Senate President or Senate
Leadership because I do not know.

I cannot tell you whether or
not she has the power to kill all pro-gun bills and not allow the Senate
to vote on them because I do not know. But -- as the old saying goes
-- "it ain't over 'till it's over," and this is only Day 2 of the 2017
Legislative session.

And finally, am I giving up for this
session? ABSOLUTELY NOT. I represent law-abiding gun owners statewide
and they depend on me to fight for them and I will."

Like Miguel and others, I've sent the Senate President my own comments, which start like this:

It's being widely reported that Ms. Flores effectively turned her back on her
supporters and said she wouldn’t support any of Senator Steube’s
10 gun proposals. Whether this is simply being a turncoat or if it's
the result of bribery or other corruption, readers can't say but
it's a betrayal of her supporters and all of Florida's law-abiding
gun owners. In spite of her anti-gun vote promise, in recently
(post-Pulse club shooting) writing pro-2nd amendment letters to
Marion Hammer, Ms. Flores clearly and plainly said she was on the
side of legal gun owners. In reversing direction she has betrayed
not just all of her supporters, but has cast a pall over every
Republican elected official in the state.

Anitere Flores, right, with Michelle Gajda, head of the Florida chapter of Michael Bloomberg's (the most dependable asshole in American politics (tm)) "Moms Demand Action".

Miguel proposes a simple approach: reset every senator's NRA grade to zero. We no longer grade on PR statements or returned questionnaires: we grade on results. Pass laws restoring our rights, you get good grades. Block them, you get left at zero. Unfortunately, I don't think that's right either. To Michelle Gajda and her fellow travelers, a zero from the NRA is a good grade and I don't want to give her a good grade. Likewise, Senator Steube really is a better advocate and friend than Flores, so if we go by the idea that nobody gets above zero if the laws aren't passed, he ends up rated the same as she does. She's the roadblock and needs to be seen as the roadblock. I don't think there is a fix for someone flipping like this, until the primaries, by which time we're fighting a rear-guard action to try and get rid of them to keep them from doing more damage. Again - just like last year.

Hi, Miguel here.Really quick, the quote above goes to Lee Williams of The Gun Writer as I was quoting from his article. (https://www.thegunwriter.com/22432/when-trying-to-justify-why-she-turned-on-gun-owners-sen-flores-flubs-the-dates/)

I understand the concern about the Zero Rating, but it is time we get some "product" for the votes we issue. It has been what? 3-4 years without any significant Pro Gun Bill in the state of Florida with a Republican Governor and both houses of the Legislature fully Republican? So we are being played by all the pols (a big possibility) or we have elected inefficient people to posts of responsibility. In either case, they either deliver or don't get the goodies.

If it's true that Flores is aiming for Mayor in Miami or some other office, we may be seeing the drawback to term limits. I started to notice that with my state senator and representatives this past election cycle. They don't get out of politics, they rotate offices, with the senator moving to another office and representative running for his seat.

Here's the problem: the ratings don't matter if they're not running for re-election, or election to a statewide office where enough voters care. If someone is leaving Tally and running for office in a blue city or county, a good NRA rating doesn't mean anything. Ditching an NRA rating is like selling any other asset to get some of that Bloomberg money.

At some level, though, it has to sink into these guys minds that the actions of someone like Flores are going to hurt all Republicans running for office. We need to make it known that we're not a captive audience who will donate to them just because they have an R after their name.

a zero from the NRA is a good grade and I don't want to give her a good grade

Well, OK, then let's start everyone's grade at -5, and use 0 as a neutral grade.

I'm with Miguel on this - a legislator's "grade" on pro-gun issues must begin depending on the finalresults of their actions, not a questionnaire or sound bites. I use final results because often the $@#& weasels will vote for something quite publicly - and proclaim that vote shows they support gun owners - then when it really counts, vote against it in the dead of night, often by voting for a completely different bill that nullifies their earlier pro-gun vote.

We, as law-abiding citizens seeking full use of our Constitutional rights, need to draw a line - as a legislator, you're either for us or against us, and while we focus on gun rights, that's just the tip of the iceberg on Constitutional rights issues - and then take the necessary actions to ensure they become unemployed at the next election, or not, based on what they actually deliver in the legislature. Letters and phone calls are good, but legislators will respond with whatever they think the caller or letter writer wants to hear, then vote against us. Their election, and re-elections, must be based on actual performance in office.

State (and federal) legislators don't spring from bare earth - they get elected based on previous performance, experience and contacts. Dig into their history for pro-gun vote ratings. A city councilman may not have much on record regarding gun rights votes, but if he - or she - has a history of being a prostitute for leftist causes, that needs to affect their pro-gun rating.

We have the same RINO problem in SC, and with more divisions within the state (the Upstate is quite conservative, Mid-state (Columbia and surrounding counties) quite a bit less so, and the "Low Country" (the coastal areas) leans strongly left (money and votes from mid-state and especially the low country are why SC can't stop sending Lindsey Graham back to the Senate....)

Florida is shifting left, south FL has been that way for some time; most of the west coast is more conservative than the east coast, but the political power centers in Florida aren't on the west coast, and Tallahassee is Just Another Georgia Suburb, a couple hundred miles from where most of Florida lives. Gun rights is an uphill battle in that climate, and it will become more so as liberal migrants move in. Florida does have over 1.6 million CPW licensees, all of who are at risk for arrest from LE rabidly ignoring the provisions of 790.053, which was one of the drivers for open carry legalization. A lot of those licensees must live in south FL, start motivating them to make better choices on their legislators.

State (and federal) legislators don't spring from bare earth - they get elected based on previous performance, experience and contacts. Increasingly, it looks like the same names keep moving from office to office as they term limit out of whatever chair they're sitting in. Once they get name recognition, it becomes the same phenomenon that gives us the "80% of incumbents get re-elected", except they get "re-elected" to an office they never had before.

The precarious left/right status of Florida has been a tug of war for as long as I've been aware of politics. The big city/rural divide that the entire nation shows plays out here all the time. In my lifetime, Orlando has gone from being reliably "red" to pushing for Sanctuary City status. Like other no-income-tax states, Florida is importing people at a high rate, third in the country, many from the Northeast liberal paradise. As we continue to grow, I expect more leftward pressure.

I don't think there is a fix for someone flipping like this, until the primaries, by which time we're fighting a rear-guard action to try and get rid of them to keep them from doing more damage. Again - just like last year.

They want you to buy into the rough-and-tumble of the legislative contest, not realize the average winning side is set by the contest rules.

it looks like the same names keep moving from office to office as they term limit out of whatever chair they're sitting in. Once they get name recognition, it becomes the same phenomenon that gives us the "80% of incumbents get re-elected", except they get "re-elected" to an office they never had before.

Abso-freaking-lutely. Politics is nothing more than high-dollar incest.Here's my hobby horse on this:

"No one shall serve more than five terms, or portions thereof, in elected office in the United States, no more than two terms of which may be in the same office. Service in an elected office shall be disqualification for receiving remuneration, in any form, from a government in the United States, with the exception of salary, benefits and retirement commensurate with rank in the Armed Forces of the United States."

If anyone has a better suggestion, go for it; until we find a way to break the chain of school board to city councilman to county commissioner to state representative to state senator to congressman to senator to president we'll never drain the first drop of water out of the swamp.

With the exception that some elected offices include retirement benefits, this is about as good as it gets.

Within the last few weeks, I was telling a friend that there are key issues that are never going to be resolved because each side uses it as a constant fund-raising scheme. The Evil party always fund raises on "the Stupid party is going to take your social security", and the Stupid party always fund raises on "the Evil party is going to take away gun rights". Nobody is going to kill off Social Security until the country collapses because it's just too popular with both sides. Remember when everyone called it "the third rail of American politics"? If you touch it, you die? Likewise, despite Hillary and dozens of other Evil Party members saying they're going to outlaw guns, if they do that, they can never fund raise on that topic again. It's a scare tactic designed to get you to open your wallet.

To paraphrase Trotsky, "You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you." As a sheep to be fleeced for the money to keep it going.

I think we need 60% to pass a constitutional amendment? My gut feel is that I doubt it. I think the number of concealed carry permits is a rough surrogate measurement for the number of gun owners, and it's on the order of 3-5%. I don't think I can get past 20 or 25% gun owners, no matter how optimistic I get.

I'm gonna be out of favor with this comment but: Your legislator needs to hear from you AND needs to see large turnouts of voters/activists/tea party/etc. Shouldn't be that way but it is. The left or the opposition (whichever) is active and makes it seem like they represent more people than they do. You have to counter it. Our problems throughout the country are because the left organizes and shows up and the right or silent majority is mostly silent. I get it! We have jobs, we have families and we vote in people who have promised to do things so we believe we are doing all we can. But when 500 loud and angry people show up at their home or office they intimidate they guy you elected. This is a fight for our country and a fight for our rights.

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Retired radio engineer, follower of Christ, RF designer, mentor. Radio ham, home shop machinist, lapidary, silversmith, roadie cyclist, learning to be a rifleman, and home defender, - a guy with too many interests to keep track of.

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